Is Chemotherapy Treatment Worth its Expected Life Extension?

Executive Summary

• Chemotherapy is considered an automatic decision for cancer patients.
• If one analyzes the average life extension, is chemotherapy a good deal?

Introduction

After investigating how much life expectancy is added by being subjected to chemotherapy — a question immediately became apparent: shouldn’t the question of whether chemotherapy is worth the average life extension be asked and analyzed under different scenarios?

Important Point #1: The Total Improvement of Survival Over 5 Years

This quote is from the book Tripping Over the Truth: How The Metabolic Theory of Cancer Is Overturning One of Medicine’s Most Entrenched Paradigms.

The survival improvement from chemotherapy is remarkably small for all of the pain and damage to the body described in the previous section.

The 5-year relative survival rate for cancer patients diagnosed in Australia between 1992 and 1997 was 63.4% (95% CI, 63.1–63.6).

In this evidence-based analysis, we have estimated that the contribution of curative and adjuvant cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adults is 2.3% in Australia and 2.1% in the USA.

This is reinforced in the book Cancer and the New Biology of Water.

The following two quotes are from that book.

Oncology Drugs Average of Less Than Three Months Improvement in Increased Lifespan

A 2017 paper published in JAMA Oncology presented some stunning conclusions. Of sixty-two new oncology drugs approved between 2003 and 2013, only 43 percent offered a survival benefit of three months or longer —

11 percent offered a survival benefit of less than three months

15 percent had an unknown survival benefit

30 percent offered no survival benefit at all.

Then, there is the question of how much patient safety is reduced by chemotherapy.

Reviewing the 2004 “2.1%” Chemotherapy Study

This quote is from the article Why everything you know about cancer is wrong.

“A 2004 study in the journal Clinical Oncology evaluated the contribution of chemotherapy to 5-year survival rates among adult cancer patients. In other words, the goal of the study was to look at how significant chemotherapy’s role was in successful treatment outcomes (defined by oncologists as 5-year survival).

In order to arrive at a meaningful conclusion, data from many previous studies were pooled and analyzed. The 22 most common cancer types were included in the study.

“The results were surprising. The overall contribution of chemotherapy to five-year survival in American adults was 2.1 percent. This means that approximately 98 percent of the credit for survival was attributed to all other treatments, such as surgery, radiation, nutrition, etc.

“It is important to note that this study is often misquoted. You have probably heard this statistic quoted in a way which suggests that those receiving chemotherapy only have a 2.1 percent 5-year survival rate.

The 69% 5 Year Survival Rate for Cancer

“In reality, the average five-year survival rate for cancer is 69 percent. This includes all stages of cancer and makes no distinction between who received which treatments. However, given the most commonly used treatments in oncology today, it is safe to assume that many of these surviving patients received chemotherapy.

“At this point, it is important to discuss what 5-year survival means. In the oncology world, 5-year survival measures the percentage of patients who are still alive five years from the date of diagnosis. It does not mean that they are cancer-free, and it does not mean that they are completely healthy. Instead, it simply means that they have not died from cancer (or any other cause) in the five years since diagnosis.

“Survival rates can be further broken down. For example, cancer-specific survival looks at the percentage of patients with a particular type of cancer and can be further broken down to look at survival rates for each stage of cancer. Using the 5-year survival statistic with respect to breast cancer, we see that Stage 0 or Stage I breast cancer has a 5-year survival rate of nearly 100 percent.

45% of Oncology Drugs Reduce Patient Safety

Furthermore, 45 percent were associated with reduced patient safety. A 2017 study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) that looked at the survival and quality-of-life benefits of forty-eight cancer drugs approved in Europe by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) between 2009 and 2013 reached similar conclusions:

Most New Chemotherapy Drugs Approved by the EMA (European Medicines Agency) Without Evidence of Survival Benefit

This systematic evaluation of oncology approvals by the EMA in 2009–13 shows that most drugs entered the market without evidence of benefit on survival or quality of life.

At a minimum of 3.3 years after market entry, there was still no conclusive evidence that these drugs either extended or improved life for most cancer indications. When there were survival gains over existing treatment options or placebo, they were often marginal.

More on the Survival Benefits of Chemotherapy

These quotes are from the book Questioning Chemotherapy.

Even for the common cancers in which chemotherapy quote unquote works, such as small cell lung cancer, the actual survival benefit is reckoned in weeks or months, not in years. And during this time, the patient is likely to experience major even life threatening side effects from the treatment.

A Serious Decrease in the Quality of Life

Thus the overall advantage to the recipient is moot. For most patients chemotherapy actually represents a serious decrease in the quality of life due to the rampant toxicity of most of the drugs used.

I cover this in more detail in the article The Dramatic Reduction in Quality of Life of Chemotherapy Patients.

The quote continues.

Chemotherapy as Bottled Death?

Oncologists have been derelict in not doing reproducible studies to investigate this question.

For many patients and their families chemotherapy is bottled death according to the poignant words of Senator Hubert Humphrey, just before his own death from bladder cancer.

Degrading the Body’s Ability to Fight Cancer

Another drawback of chemotherapy is rarely considered aggressive chemotherapy reduces the likelihood of benefiting from other promising non toxic nutritional or immune illogical treatments.

Damaging the Bone Marrow and Many Organs

By damaging the bone marrow and various other organs of the body chemotherapy can diminish the patient’s chances of profiting from promising treatments that depend upon enhancing your immunity, performance status and improved functionality.

Studies on Chemotherapy Life Extension

Study #1: Oncology Drugs Average Less Than Three Months Improvement in Increased Lifespan

A 2017 paper published in JAMA Oncology presented some stunning conclusions. Of sixty-two new oncology drugs approved between 2003 and 2013, only 43 percent offered a survival benefit of three months or longer, 11 percent offered a survival benefit of less than three months, 15 percent had an unknown survival benefit, and 30 percent offered no survival benefit at all.

Study #2: 2.1 Months of Extended Life From Chemotherapy Drugs According to Studies That Are Majority Controlled by Pharmaceutical Companies

Most of these drugs only add a few months to cancer patients’ lives, as explained in the quotation from Up, Up and Not Going Away: Cancer Drug Prices.

According to Hertler, 71 consecutive FDA approvals of drugs to treat solid tumors increased survival an average of just 2.1 months, and 70% of the drugs approved over the past two decades had no effect on improving overall survival.

This is covered in more detail in the article How Effective is Chemotherapy?

However, the problem is that the actual number is certainly lower than this because the 2.1-month average is based upon studies that were majority controlled by pharmaceutical companies. And the field results never match the clinical trials — they are always worse. Therefore, based on what I have seen in studies, there may be no life extension at all, or the life extension could easily be negative. How this works is covered in the article How Pharmaceutical Companies Rig Clinical Trials.

The Reality of the Expected Life Extension from Chemotherapy Drugs

The amount of shocking information in this video is overwhelming. It is only 6:48 minutes long, but requires far more than that time to digest.

I recommend watching the video and then reviewing my comments below it, as this will help readers better understand the content and its implications.

Important Point #1: Ineffective Drugs or Harmful Cancer Drugs Retain FDA Approval

At the 0:30 mark in this video, Dr. Michael Gregor explains that even after cancer drugs are shown to be ineffective in the field, the FDA does not retract their approval. See the following quote from the study referenced by Dr. Gregor titled Hans Christian Anderson and the Value of Cancer Treatments.

…even when postmarket studies show the new drugs to have no clinically meaningful benefit compared with placebo or observation, most drugs retain FDA approval and remain on the market at prices comparable to the most expensive cancer drugs.

Furthermore,  the FDA never seems to question why the results from field use are always lower than the benefits from pharmaceutical-controlled studies.

Important Point #2: $163,000 Per Year for a Drug the FDA Knows Worsens Patient Outcomes

At the 1:10 mark in the video, Dr. Gregor points out that the FDA kept one drug that cost $163,000 per year, which provided no benefit and worsened patient outcomes. This is because the top officials are happy to have ineffective drugs that worsen patient outcomes. After all, the top officials at the FDA have allegiance not to the public, but to the industry they pretend to regulate. The FDA is not regulating the drug industry — they are a PR front end for the drug industry.

Important Point #3: 10 Days Life Extension = Is Considered “Significant” by Drug Companies — and the FDA Agrees

At the 1:30 mark in the video, Dr. Gregor exposed that one study considered a “significant” life extension to be 10 days. 

Furthermore, this drug, shown in the study to extend life by ten days, had major side effects.

Important Point #4: 2.1 Months of Life Extension from Rigged Clinical Trials

At the 2:30 mark in the video, Dr. Gregor quotes from a study that calculated the expected life extension from drugs approved by the FDA over a dozen years for treating cancer.

The study found that the average life extension (during the clinical trial, which is exaggerated) was 2.1 months.

As I already pointed out, the field results never match the clinical trial; the real-life extension could easily be negative for weeks or months. I will address this point further on in the video. Because I believe the life extension from chemotherapy is actually negative and not positive.

Important Point #5: Patients Expect Much More Life Extension

At the 3:00 mark, Dr. Gregor quotes a study that 2/3 of terminal cancer patients thought their chemotherapy was curative when it was not. He states that most patients would not choose chemotherapy if informed of its limited life extension.

Important Point #6: Downplaying the Risks of Chemotherapy

At the 4:30 mark in the video, Dr. Gregor highlights a study that states oncologists often use Orwellian language to cover up the risks and downsides by saying things like the drugs have a “manageable and mostly reversible safety profile.” Oncologists usually describe the most debilitating side effects as “manageable and well tolerated by patients.”

The Problem With Looking At This Life Extension in Isolation

There are two significant problems with the expected life extensions from chemotherapy drugs.

1. Chemotherapy is costly.
2. Chemotherapy reduces the quality of life that one experiences when taking chemotherapy.
3. Both of these factors significantly increase the stress that cancer patients experience.

Doing Some Basic Math on Several Scenarios to Get To Net Benefit

Let us take just the example of the reduction in quality of life. Let us review two different scenarios.

Scenario #1: A Patient Takes Chemotherapy for Four Years and Then Dies

Let us say that a person is on chemotherapy for four years.

So, they take the chemotherapy treatment for four years and then die. However, because their life was extended along with the average of 2.1 months, they lived 4 * 12 = 48 months instead of 46 months — that is the length of time they would have lived if they had not done any chemotherapy.

Now let us imagine all of the side effects of chemotherapy, including. Vomiting, losing one’s hair, neuropathy, etc. That extension of life was 2.1/46 = 4.5%. However, there is little doubt that chemotherapy reduces one’s quality of life by more than 4.5%. 

Remember, I am using the results from many pharmaceutical-controlled studies. So this life extension is exaggerated. It is most certainly lower than 4.5%.

Scenario #2: A Patient Takes Chemotherapy for Two Years and Then Dies

In this case, the extension of life was 2.1/22 = 9.5%.

However, yet again, this is exaggerated and, in reality, may be 0%. But let us assume it is 9.5% for a moment. While this is better, is it worth the side effects of chemotherapy? Doesn’t more than 9.5% degrade one’s life because they have to deal with the issues of chemotherapy? How does chemotherapy add enough value in life extension to justify these side effects?

Also, recall that this analysis does not include the exorbitant costs of chemotherapy.

Why Doesn’t Chemotherapy Cure Cancer Patients Included in the Scenarios?

This is because, after reading many chemotherapy studies, I have not seen any evidence that chemotherapy cures cancer patients. Some people survive chemotherapy, but the most likely explanation is that the immune system overcame the chemotherapy and cancer rather than chemotherapy being the culprit. If chemotherapy were effective at curing cancer, it would not perform so poorly in all ways that we can measure its outcome.

Chemotherapy is not a standard treatment because it is effective, and it is a standard treatment because it is profitable for cancer centers, pharmaceutical companies, and medical device manufacturers. As I cover in The Absurd Markup of 300 Percent on Average for Chemotherapy Drugs, it is tough for cancer centers to claim that they do not have a massive profit incentive to promote chemotherapy.

Is It That Surprising That an Industry Would Offer Something Bad for Its Users?

This is very similar to the question of why cigarettes are still sold. Cigarettes are known as the number one cause of lung cancer. However, that does not stop companies from marketing and selling cigarettes. Process food companies do a similar thing. It is normalized for companies to sell items that are bad for the health of their customers. Therefore, it should not be surprising that the medical establishment follows the same approach to profit maximization.

It Is Not Only Chemotherapy

Overall, the lifespan after diagnosis with cancer is longer for those who forego conventional treatment than for those who accept traditional treatment. The book Goodbye Germ Theory explains the comparative lifespan of these two groups.

Statistically, if a person acquires a fatal cancer, death will occur within 5 years with medical treatment. If a person does not seek any kind of treatment, death occurs within an average of 12 years.

Asking AI Bots About Chemotherapy

So, it’s become an increasingly significant source of information for people. Let’s take a look at what the AI chatbots say about chemotherapy’s ability to extend.

Chat Bot Response #1: The AI Bot Grok on Chemotherapy’s Life Extension

The following quote is from the chatbot Grok on the topic.

Chemotherapy is a widely used cancer treatment that can be highly effective in shrinking tumors, preventing spread, and sometimes completely eliminating cancer, depending on factors like the type, stage, and individual patient response.¹ For example, in localized non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer, the 5-year survival rate reaches 81%, while it’s 47% for muscle-invasive cases.²

However, its overall impact on long-term survival can be limited in some studies, with one analysis suggesting it contributes to only about 2.1% of 5-year survival rates across various cancers.³

It’s not just “one study”, this is actually the average over many studies.

Effectiveness often varies significantly; it may cure certain cancers like some lymphomas or leukemias but offers more palliative benefits in advanced solid tumors.¹ Drawbacks include potential side effects such as genotoxicity, which can increase the risk of secondary cancers by causing DNA mutations.⁴

Chat Bot Response #2: The AI Bot Sonnet on Chemotherapy’s Life Extension

The following quote is from the chatbot Sonnet on the topic.

Based on clinical studies, chemotherapy provides an average life extension of approximately 2-3 months for cancer patients.¹²

Specifically, research shows:

• One study found chemotherapy was associated with a 2-month improvement in overall survival³
• Another study indicated that when patients were given accurate information about expected benefits, 22% chose chemotherapy for a survival benefit of 3 months, which represented the actual expected benefit²
• Additional research has documented similar modest extensions in the 2-3 month range¹

Important Considerations

It’s crucial to understand that this figure represents an average across all cancer types and stages.

That is what my question was—the average.

For some patients, chemotherapy may provide significantly longer survival benefits, while for others, the benefit may be minimal or absent.

These averages help inform treatment decisions, but individual prognosis should always be discussed with oncologists who can consider the specific circumstances of each case.

I would disagree with that last piece of advice because it is very common for oncologists to still recommend cancer treatments even in situations where there is no benefit to doing so. See the following comment.

In 2016, my mom passed away due to chemo, not from cancer, Multiple Myeloma (MM). Part of her treatment was a newly approved drug that ended up in liver failure. Thankfully she stopped taking in time for her liver to start functioning again.

After her death, I researched peer review articles on MM. They all knew for over 10 years chemo never cured one person with MM. They suggested trying alternative treatments even though non to date had shown much promise. This made my blood boil that her doctors at a well known cancer treatment center in CA knew chemo wouldn’t work. Yet, for 2 years, they insisted her to have chemo. My mom was so sick from chemo, she spent those years in bed until she developed the wasting disease — where immune system no longer function and organ failure.

During those 2 years, maybe even longer, had she not had chemo, she would have lived her last days healthier, and better quality of life. Those chemo treatments emptied my parents retirement funds to pay what their insurance didn’t cover. It was pure greed by those doctors.

Chat Bot Response #3: The AI ChatGPT on Chemotherapy’s Life Extension

See this answer from ChatGPT.

There isn’t a single “average” across all cancers. In the palliative treatment of advanced/metastatic cancer, chemotherapy typically extends life by about 2–3 months on average.¹² For example:

• A study of patient preferences framed chemotherapy’s expected survival gain as about 3 months.¹
• Observational data found that receiving chemotherapy was associated with an approximately 2‑month improvement in overall survival; continuing it within 14 days of death did not add further benefit.²
• These figures apply mainly to palliative settings. In other situations, chemotherapy can offer much larger benefits—sometimes adding years or even achieving cures (e.g., certain leukemias/lymphomas, testicular cancer, and adjuvant therapy for early-stage colon or breast cancer).

In my testing of topics, ChatGPT always provides the most dishonest and biased responses. And it is the most in the matrix of the different AI chatbots. And it proves so again in this response. What is the average for palliative, metastatic cancer patients? This is not true. Additionally, the idea that ChatGPT presents —that there is no average —is also not accurate.

Also, I did not ask for the average for palliative or metastatic patients. So why is ChatGPT answering a question I did not ask?

Chat Bot Response #4: The AI Bot Deepseek on Chemotherapy’s Life Extension

Based on research findings, chemotherapy provides an average life extension of 2 to 3 months for cancer patients, particularly in advanced stages. Specific studies report:

• An average extension of 2.1 months from chemotherapy drugs ¹
• A 2-month improvement in overall survival ²
• Patients choosing chemotherapy for an expected benefit of 3 months, aligning with actual outcomes in some cases ³

This average varies significantly depending on:

• Cancer type and stage (e.g., metastatic vs. early-stage)
• Patient health and age
• Specific chemotherapy regimen
• Combination with other treatments (e.g., immunotherapy or radiation)

While these averages may appear modest, chemotherapy remains a critical intervention for certain cancers where longer extensions are possible. It may also provide palliative benefits by alleviating symptoms and improving quality of life beyond pure survival metrics. ¹²

The question arises whether various AI chatbots seem to converge on around 2 to 3 months of life extension. Then why are so many patients who must be using chatbots agreeing to accept chemotherapy?

Is the Life Extension from Chemotherapy Negative?

As you can see, we have used sources that all propose a small but positive life extension value for chemotherapy. After reviewing a large amount of evidence on this topic, I believe that the life extension offered by chemotherapy is negative. A researcher demonstrated this over 50 years ago. After spending years investigating this topic, it’s incredible to me how this researcher eluded my observation for so long.

The following quote is from the article The Truth About Chemotherapy: It Kills More Patients than Cancer.

Dr. Hardin B. Jones, a former professor of medical physics and physiology at the University of California, Berkeley, had been studying the lifespans of cancer patients for more than 25 years when he came to the conclusion that, despite popular belief, chemotherapy doesn’t work. He witnessed a multitude of cancer patients treated with the poison die horrific deaths, many of them meeting their fate much earlier than other patients who chose no treatment at all.

After investigating this further, Dr. Jones found that cancer patients who underwent chemotherapy actually died more quickly, in most cases, than those who followed their doctors’ recommendations by getting the treatment. A few number-crunching efforts later and Dr. Jones exposed a fact that the conventional cancer industry doesn’t want the world to know about its multi-billion-dollar cash cow.

“People who refused treatment lived for an average of 12 and a half years,” stated Dr. Jones about his study’s findings, which were published in the journal Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences. “Those who accepted other kinds of treatment lived on an average of only 3 years.”

One of the problems is that this study was completed in 1969, and I’m having a problem finding the original study.

Breast cancer patients who reject all conventional therapies live four times longer than those who follow the system

Dr. Jones’ study also found that the same is true concerning conventional treatments for breast cancer. Women with breast cancer who refused chemotherapy, radiation and surgery – and remained untreated – likewise lived four times longer than women who went under the knife or agreed to be poisoned with chemicals.

As admitted in a more recent study published in the journal Clinical Oncology back in 2004, chemotherapy is really only effective about 2 percent of the time for all cancers. And this is based on the standard five-year survival rate criteria, which isn’t technically indicative of a cure – even though health authorities often like to claim it is.

A separate study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association back in 1979 found that many of the most common procedures for diagnosing and treating breast cancer, nearly all of which are still used today, have done nothing to lower breast cancer rates or increase survival for breast cancer patients.

Two other studies, one of out Israel that was published in 1978 and another out of the UK that was published in The Lancet in 1980, came to similar findings.

“Overall survival of patients with primary breast cancer has not improved in the past 10 years, despite increasing use of multiple-drug chemotherapy for treatment of metastasis,” explains the Lancet study, entitled “Failure of Chemotherapy to Prolong Survival in a Group of Patients with Metastatic Breast Cancer.”

If you cripple your immunity, what have you got? If you wipe out all of your good bacteria in your gut, what’s left? Did you know that if you survive with chemotherapy and cancer for five years you are statistically entered in the “cancer books” as a survivor, even if you drop dead the next day due to chemo-overload, organ strangulation or total lack of immunity? The chemotherapy and radiation treatments are leading to death stemming from the simple common cold or the flu. That’s right, then pneumonia takes over, because you have no more white blood cells to fight off infections. Who knew?

Of course, we can’t count up all the chemo deaths, because the hospitals and oncologists will always simply say that “the cancer spread” and that was the cause of termination. That’s what goes “on the books.”

For terminal patients as well, a recent 2016 study in the peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society CANCER found that living at home instead of being treated at the hospital prolonged their lives by about 45%.

Conclusion

If we look at the medical establishment’s studies into the benefits of chemotherapy, which entirely leave out its costs and side effects, it is a very poor overall value.

However, my conclusion is that chemotherapy hurts life extension.

Chemotherapy is costly, undermines what people can do with the life they have left, and has an average life extension capability that is insufficient to cover the pain and suffering of the treatment. There are a few cancers for which chemotherapy may be considered worthwhile, such as testicular cancer or Hodgkin’s disease. However, even here, we don’t know the value added to chemotherapy. For the vast majority of cancer patients, chemotherapy is a losing proposition.

One has to question how many people would accept the chemotherapy recommendation of their oncologist if they had the information regarding the improvement of survival from chemotherapy.